REMARKS
Council Member Lincoln Restler Opens Budget Hearing on DCAS, NYC Law Department, OATH, and DORIS
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5 min
Council Member Lincoln Restler chairs his inaugural budget hearing, scrutinizing city agency budgets and emphasizing decarbonization and fiscal effectiveness.
- Restler lays out the session's focus on testimonies from key city departments, including their fiscal year 2025 preliminary plans.
- He underscores the critical roles these agencies play in New York City's operations and their fulfilment of vital municipal functions.
- The hearing underscores the city budget as a moral document reflecting civic values and operational efficiency amidst Mayor Adams' budget cuts.
- Concerns over the impact of budgetary constraints on city agencies' abilities to meet their objectives are vocalized, highlighting decarbonization efforts.
- Appreciation is extended towards staff for their preparatory work and Don Pinock is welcomed to discuss the Department of Citywide Administrative Services' budget, with a special note on its decarbonization initiatives.
Lincoln Restler
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Good morning.
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Thank you all for being with us today.
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It's nice to see many familiar faces.
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My name is Lincoln wrestler, and welcome to my first budget hearing as the new chair the city council's governmental operations, state, and federal legislation committee that is a mouthful.
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Today, we will hear testimony from the Department of Citywide of services, d class, the law department, office of in office of administrative trials and hearings, oath, the Board of Election and the Department of Records And Information Services.
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We've got a fun day ahead of us regarding everybody's fiscal 25 preliminary plans.
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The agencies testifying today carry out many of the most important functions that keep our city running, including managing the city's vehicle fleet.
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Ensuring that city wide heat and light and power bills are paid on time, advising and defending us from lawsuits, conducting elections, collecting administrative fines, preserving acts as to historical and contemporary records of city government facilitating city employee hiring, reducing carbon emissions generated by the public sector and so much more.
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Our responsibility as members of this committee is to work closely with these agencies to ensure that they are effectively delivering the services New Yorkers depend on.
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Our city budget is a moral document that upholds the values we prioritize as a city, and it showcases how well it is being managed.
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There is no question that multiple hiring freezes and 7 rounds of budget cuts by Mayor Adams has left many of our city agencies struggling.
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To fulfill their mandates.
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We look forward to hearing more detail about 5 agency budgets today and whether funding is being used effectively and efficiently.
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I'd like to make sure that we thank our committee staff for their work on preparing for this hearing.
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I'd like to thank financial is Ross Goldstein for his expert work.
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I'd like to thank the finance unit head, Julia Hernandez.
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Julia has done an exceptional job in supporting me and my team and preparing for this hearing.
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And of course, our senior legislative council, Jayshree Giannopathy, our legislative policy analyst, Erica Cohen, my communications director, Naimuni, and I wanna just especially thank my chief of staff, Molly Haley, who is just brilliant.
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And all of the smart things that I any of the smart things that ever kinda met come out of my mouth mostly came from her, so I just wanna thank Molly for being an exceptional partner.
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I'd now like to welcome Don Pinock, the commissioner of the department of city wide of services to testify before the committee.
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Thank you so much for being here today.
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DeCast serves sorry.
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The Department of Citywide Administrative Financial Services 2025 preliminary budget totals $2,000,000,000, including 223,600,000 in personnel, in personal services, funding to support 2367 full time positions and 1,770,000,000 for other than personal services.
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Dicast's budget is divided into 10 program areas, and the bulk of the agency's overall budget or 55.2% is allocated the energy conservation program area.
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In the preliminary plan, Decast's fiscal 2025 preliminary budget is 354,000,000 more than the fiscal 24 adopted budget.
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This increase is mainly driven by funding for Decast's office of citywide purchasing to cover asylum related expenses.
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In today's hearing, we look forward to discussing Decast's operations, new needs, and pegs in the preliminary pan, plan, and the agency's plans for decarbonization of our city fleet and buildings.
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Hiring, recruitment and retention policies, renewable rikers, and courthouse management.
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Commissioner, as I have said to you before, I believe your selection was one of the mayor's best appointments.
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I greatly appreciate the work you're doing to modernize our civil service exam system, reduce the size of the city fleet, and increase safety and increase MWBE contracts.
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Our buildings and transportation represent the 2 largest sources of carbon emissions in New York City.
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We are rightly placing more and more ambitious requirements on the private sector to reduce their their emissions, but it is imperative that our city serve as a model.
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Accordingly, I'd like to express my significant concern about some of the cuts that have been imposed on the Decast budget that undermine our urgent sustainability goals.
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We are required to electrify the city fleet by 2038, but cuts to the tune of $15,000,000 this fiscal year to electric vehicle purchasing and 5th $10,000,000 more in future fiscal years, render that next to impossible.
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I'm even more concerned about the $1,000,000,000 cut to the decast capital plan.
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That was 17% of all city agency capital project cuts.
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This will significantly hinder the city's ability to reach our urgent decarbonization goals of public sector buildings, a critical objective in the face of the climate crisis, and one that is very important to me as the District 33 council member, where we have, I believe, the 2nd largest concentration of public buildings in the city of New York.
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Commissioner and team, we greatly appreciate you being with us today.
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We look forward to your testimony.
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I'd like to acknowledge my colleagues who are here today, from Queens, council member Schulman, and council member Paladino.
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I if you would and I just would like to ask commissioner, if you could limit testimony to 5 minutes, we will of course, accept a longer version for the record, and I'd now like to ask the committee council to administer the oath.
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And customer general is somewhere online.
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There we go.
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In the ether, Jim, we appreciate you always.